I converted an older 2M to electric and it worked out well. If yours is the above you'll need to be careful in motor and battery selection. Looks like a very slender fuselage nose section. Maybe others will chime in with more experience with that bird. My gut reaction is yes you should be able to do it. And you'll like it!

Been thinking of TRYING??? To convert a new SLING 2M To electric,??
Any and all info will be appreciated, Thanks......Kid

Back in the mid 1980's I converted all of my sailplanes to electric launch. All of them worked out very well. Two were 10 foot Craftaire Viking Sailplanes that could and did fly a number of 2 hour plus flights. Also included were a half dozen other models ranging from the old reliable "Gentle Lady" to several 100 inch models, a 112 inch model and those Vikings.

Several things to be aware of.
1. The motor must have a folding prop. A windmilling prop is a LOT of drag.

2. Most motors have a rotating "Can" that must be accounted for in the crowded nose of the fuselage. Can't have any possibility of wires touching that can.

3. Electric launches can put your model very high in the air, far higher than a winch or hi-start launch. It is very wise to outfit your wings with a set of spoilers. Eventually you are going to get into high lift, and no way to safely get your model back on the ground. Diving can result in wing flutter.

My models had balsa and ply fuselages, so I just cut off the nose, and fabricated a new nose to fit my motor and battery pack. You will likely have to move the servos back to allow room for the motor/ESC/battery pack. The extra weight added was minimal, since the nose usually was packed full of lead shot for balancing the model. That was back in the days of heavy geared brush type motors and Nicad batteries.

Once done, and you get the cg correct, these electric launches work out very well. Just be careful on the launch, the power of these motors can require a lot of down elevator during climb out so the model doesn't loop on you.

I cut the nose off in my big miter saw to give me about 4 degrees down thrust.
Figure out what size a spinner you are going to use, and use that size on the vertical axis of the fuse, you can fill in the sides if you want with balsa then paint. I haven't got to that yet.

Motor mount is dependent on the style of motor. I had a 28mm motor with a mount that uses set screws in from the sides, I was able to fasten the back mount and then drilled holes in the sides of the pod to tighten the set screws into the tail part of the motor.

Keep it light and it works great.
The Fling 2m seems to have the CG a little further back than other planes, but that's where the plane likes it.

Thanks , Chief, I,am going to go the same way, This was really good to see one all set up. I was allso a Navy man, Black shoe, A/O VA165 A-6 Squardren, And a special thanks to the Moderator, Gramps, who moved my post to the right fourum............
kidhickey

In this thread:http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1292472
go to Post 7 and there's a good photo of a sailplane with its spoilers open. Spoilers are little panels on top of the wing that can be opened if your plane needs to come down faster, usually if you're in a really strong thermal and can't get down, or for landing in a small space.

How much building and flying experience have you got? Are you planning to fly this as a real sailplane (high launches and thermal hunting) or more as a trainer?

Main problem is getting servos in place . I want to put them under the wing but there is not much room . Can anyone tell me which servos I could use and how I can install them as I spent 3 hours looking at it yesterday and its driving me to distraction !

Unfamiliar with the Fling... but you should be able to use standard micro servos, micro digital servos or the high torque super thin servos made for thin wings. Sailplanes generally don't need high torque.

Yes, standard servos can be too thick for the the wings of most sailplanes.

The thin wing servos should be a good hint at how to get them in the thin wing. They are designed specially for mounting "sideways" so just the servo arm's end sticks out of the wing.
You can mount the standard (mini and micro also) servos to a thin ply hatch and get similar results. The hatch then gets attached to the wing (usually with screws). This has become a common way to mount servos in wings.

Sorry FH , but I still want the servos inside the Fuz just under where the wing sits

I hope micro servos will be strong enough but dont really know how much torque would be exerted from the rudder /elavator on the fling.

You might guess that my construction skills are limited having used ARF since i came back to modeling .

But I did see a picture of the fling in this thread with two servos fiited at a 45 degree angle side by side . The clever part was the use of 90 degree servo arms which I have not seen used before. In fact , I have not seen them on any model supplies site .

All advice , greatly appreciated .

I would love to get my Fling in the air as we are promised a heat wave soon !

Seems I misunderstood and thought you were installing aileron and/or flap servos.

The solution will still be finding the correct servos and probably will still be smaller servos to deal with the space taken up y the electric power system's battery.

Depending on fuselage width you can put them side by side or might have to put one in front of the other. I expect you'll need to alter the pushrod lengths also.

For my Gentle Lady I'll be using HS-5055 servos essentially under the wing trailing edge, mounted with 3M outdoor rated (grey) foam double-stick tape (sold in many packages including labeled as automotive trim mounting tape) I will also insert balsa block(s) between/beside the servos, held in place with more of this tape. Simple and secure for this low load application.

Looks like Fling has very similar performance to the old Gentle Lady... very similar wing and other proportions, just a more modern fuselage.
Clip the pushrod tubes and shorten the pushrods... put the servos where you want em. Epoxy the hardwood servo mounting rails in to hold the servos. Slightly scuff the place you will glue with fine sandpaper to help the glue bite into the fiberglass.

Full size servos should fit in the front half of the area under the wing. Minis or micros if putting them back further. That pod and boom has quite a taper.